Pristine InfoSolutions, the only company in India, providing comprehensive cyber-crime investigation services and solutions to prevent, detect and resolve growing cyber-crime, frauds and security incidents including digital forensics. In an interview with Insights Success, Rizwan Shaikh, Information Security Researcher, and Cyber Crime Consultant gave some insightful views highlighting the necessity of cybersecurity in various domains and their solutions which help enterprises across the world to overcome their business challenges.
Kindly brief us about your organization.
Pristine InfoSolutions is a global IT service and Information Security Company based in Mumbai, India embracing strong competencies in IT Outsourcing Services, Systems Integration, IT Infrastructure Management, IT Security and Audit Services, Cyber Crime Investigations, Cyber Law and the entire spectrum of IT Security training businesses. The organization focusses on delivering smart, next-generation business solutions that help enterprises across the world to overcome their business challenges. Excelled with a unique business model, strong values and philosophy, combined with trained, certified and highly experienced workforce, we have established a reputation for providing top-notch IT and Information Security services to industry leaders. We help organizations reduce risk and enhance competitive advantage by protecting their information assets and providing positive assurance on governance. Pristine has been at the forefront of pioneering innovative IT solutions and services, enabling our clients to meet their business objectives. Our IT Outsourcing offerings aim to become the outsourced IT Department of the customer with an experienced team of technocrats thereby, maximizing ROI on IT Infrastructure. Pristine’s System Integration Services include supply, installation, and integration of hardware and software across India with complex IT implementation projects to ensure that all our clients always benefit from the latest cutting-edge technology. We have over 60 employees & 10 branches across India and Abroad. The organizations aim to create a Safe Cyber Domain for the generation.
Briefly tell us about the CEO/Founder of the company
Rizwan Shaikh is a prominent Information Security Researcher and Cyber Crime Consultant with more than ten years of experience in the meadow of Ethical Hacking, Information Security, and Cyber Law. He is a well-recognized name in the Cyber World, and with an experience of more than ten years, he has been conducting Ethical Hacking training and providing Information Security services across the globe. He is widely sought after Speaker on Cyber Security and Cyber Law and has been invited by many corporate Organizations and leading institutions of India including IIT’s and NIT’s for conducting workshops, seminars, boot-camps, and training on Ethical Hacking and Information Security. He has trained more than 30000 individuals in Colleges, Corporates, and Government Departments.
He has trained employees of some of the most prestigious companies like Accenture, Wipro, Capgemini, Trend Micro, TCS, HCL and many others. His area of expertise includes Vulnerability Assessment, Information Security Audits, Penetration Testing, Source Code Reviews, Computer Forensics, Ethical Hacking and Cyber Law.
Rizwan started his career journey at the Age of 17. His first accomplishment was finding a Loophole in a reputed SMS Gateway which allowed Spoofing numbers to send SMS (es). He came into limelight at the age of 18, when he protected many Indian websites from getting defaced by Pakistan Cyber Army where he played a significant role in finding out the plan with a pseudo name (using fake identity).
Being a Cyber Security Researcher and Ethical Hacking Expert, Rizwan has revealed numerous critical vulnerabilities, bugs, and loopholes in websites and networks of a major corporate organization, institutions, and government portals. He has also resolved many Cyber Crime cases and is also a security advisor for various reputed organizations, banks and e-commerce companies, helping them in designing safe cyber architecture for their web servers and networks. His significant accomplishments include identifying the websites which were involved in Fraudulent Activities like 419 Scam and Spamming among many others. He recently initiated and set up a feedback loop with different Anti-malware organizations to proactively share & report details about the abusive Domain names and different Malware. All his efforts are lauded by members of various underground hacking groups, security researchers, and communities worldwide. His fanaticism for Ethical Hacking and Cyber Security made him expert in the security domain.
What are the current trends in the learning and development sector?
The current generation is a digital world and is trending with the latest evolutions and technologies such as Cybersecurity, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning. The IT industry is drastically changing due to the high demand for harnessing the digital equipment and utilizing the power of Information Technology to take it to a level above.
IT is ever updating. Not only the grasping power of a person matters but how strong is the necessary practical knowledge – sets the pillar. Once a person is well versed with basics, learning advance would become handy.
Please tell us about the inspiration that stimulates you to come up with a learning and development solution provider.
Providing a well-developed curriculum & quality education has always been the aim for Pristine Infosolutions Pvt. Ltd. We have seen that there is no university level ethical hacking course available in India, which covers the significant & most essential topics of cyber security. Learner’s which are extremely good in Information Technology do not get a platform to upgrade their skills which is the most critical aspect of growing professionally. Many students find their knowledge by merely just surfing the internet, but somewhere they miss learning the most crucial topics like Cyber Law & the Ethical use of their knowledge, which results in various negative aspects at times. Thus our founder Rizwan Shaikh came up with an idea of setting up a Centre where aspiring experts can come and learn with a practice-based environment for learning.
Kindly describe your initial journey.
It was a long and tough journey so far. Being a startup, getting clients/students is always a tough task. However, one thing we made sure was never to compromise on the quality of training. There have been incidents where even after providing most excellent or desirable training with the best possible facilities, aspiring students prefer to join the some other institutes, which provides some great old certifications. The students usually do not understand that certification isjust a piece of paper if you do not have proper practical knowledge and often fall prey to Big Brand names trying to sell their certificates with their Marketing Gimmicks.
After the first establishment of our office in Mumbai, we opened a branch office in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. The same methodologies were applied like Mumbai to maintain good quality. We were slow at the start but quite steady which resulted in becoming a good brand our self in the domain of Cyber Security training & services
What kind of challenges has the company faced? How did you overcome it?
The number of people working in Ethical hacking industry or want to enhance their career in this field is very low as compared to the other domains. However, with the increase in digitalization, it has also led to a rise in the Cybercrime. At the same time, the requirement of Ethical Hackers in the Industry is rising day by day to stop these unethical hackers & their activities. Explaining people along with media that Ethical Hacking is not a bad thing and nation must create and nurture this talent; it was initially a very tough task. However, with loads of seminars and awareness campaign, we have successfully passed the correct message in the mind of majority people starting with IT corporate employees. We did a lot of media interaction and radio interview to give the word of importance of Cyber security.
How you tackle the competition in your sector?
Hire the best on high payroll. In Pristine the employees hired are one of top & Skilled hackers on the payroll as Trainers and Auditors. This indirectly results in delivering the best quality training for upcoming generation and
Organization which hires them to have a safe IT Environment for their offices.
We also made sure that we are never short of resources and facilities. We made all things available in the office including high capacity servers; high-speed multiple internet connections, and more. We never purchased PR or did any paid advertisements till date. We are more concentrated on helping thegovernment/law enforcement department to solve tough cybercrime cases. We conduct multiple awareness seminars and campaigns across all the major Engineering colleges across the country and abroad. This indirectly brought us a lot of media attention which resulted in us becoming one of the most famous Cyber Security training institutes in India with most exceptional education quality.
Describe the crucial elements which make your company the best and what would you attribute your success?
Success can never be a one-person show. It has to come with Good Team of hackers and dedicated employees sharing the same vision as of the organization. Our Entire team is responsible for all the success we have received so far. Their dedication and hard work has led us so far, and we hope they would help us achieve more milestones throughout the journey.
Kindly brief us about your future panorama?
We are planning on building up one of India’s high tech forensic lab that would soon be launched in Mumbai. This would help students to get real-time hands-on experience in a live environment. Apart from this, Pristine is planning to have an office in every state’s capital and aims at delivering the training to more than 1 lac students by the end of next year
Pristine InfoSolutions: Pioneering Next Generation Security Services
